Tinder Can Teach Us 6 Valuable Recruitment Lessons

Tinder, like any major recruitment advertising platform, is a minefield of opportunity with the promise of future career and love partnerships at every swipe of the fingertips, or click of the mouse.

For those unfamiliar with the biggest innovation in the world of dating, Tinder is a matchmaking app for opportunists, desperadoes and die-hard romantics alike. With the swipe on your phone, you use someone’s basic information (a name, an age, mutual Facebook friends, similar interests, a short description and a few of your very best, and supposedly recent, pictures) to decide if you’d like to be matched with them and let the romance begin. The same is being done by others on the other side of the phone to decide if you’re worth their interest. Brutal, subjective and superficial but with over 10 million active daily users, it clearly works.

As someone who works long hours and tends to spend early mornings annoying motorists while dressed in Lycra, the Friday night bar scene wasn’t really an option for meeting a potential Tinderella. Coupled with my love for all things technology, I’d like to think this is now enough justification for me to share with LinkedIn my foray into this world of Tinder.

Here goes…

Here are my 6 recruitment lessons from tinder

With the war for top talent getting even more competitive and the attention spans of potential job seekers dwindling by the day, here are a few lessons that I’ve picked up during my Tinder foray that employers and recruiters could embrace when embarking on the war to attract top talent.

Here are the recruitment lessons I’ve learnt…

1. Stand Out from the Crowd

Every organisation has it’s own cultural fingerprint in the same way that everyone out there is unique. Seeing mining and engineering companies using Shutterstock images of two males and one female looking at blueprints while smiling beneath a myriad of yellow hardhats is something that’s been seen 200 times before by your candidates and wont stand out in their minds. Use imagery and words that reflects the heartbeat of your culture and employer brand. This should be an opportunity to show the team building day when Accounting Department abseiled down your office block or the grinning group photo from the graduates’ welcome dinner.

I worked with a client recently who had 11 nationalities in their team of 32 which is a great point of differentiation to use in their advertising. Avoid the dull descriptions such as a Tinder profile stating, “I enjoy a fun night out but I also enjoy a quiet night on the couch. I enjoy travelling, sunshine and Saturdays“.Mmmmmm that’s really telling me nothing I didn’t know. The search continues…

2. Be Honest

I’m a little bit shorter than Michael Jordan. So after a couple of initial messages back and forth with a new found match, I would subtly drop into the conversation that they are going to need a stepladder if they ever want me to change the kitchen blinds. Either they respond that they also never buy groceries from the top shelf, or we decide on that basis that it will never work, say our goodbyes and realise that a long lasting partnership isnt on the cards.

This way I never had a first date where the unfortunate lady is gifted with the surprise of looking down upon me in more ways than one. If you’re looking for an employee who is going to have to take your notes in every meeting and collect your dry cleaning daily then let this be known at the start of the process. Make sure they are comfortable with these parts of the role and that months into their role, they will still be engaged and enjoy their job. Don’t wait until they start the role to drop this bombshell, as a mismatched hire can cost your company up to $50,000, they will be out the door and you’ll be back to square one.

3. Make you First Impression Count

Using a profile photo of me at a Thai restaurant holding hands with an ex-girlfriend or striking a pensive pose dressed head to toe in aforementioned body-hugging Lycra is the equivalent of having a job ad with a broken link, badly formatted logo or spelling mistake. These little things greatly influence a candidate’s decision to apply for a role. Often you’ll only have one opportunity to create an impression before the object of your desires (aka the dream candidate) moves on to better things. Don’t say you’re an innovative, tech focused organisation and then have a microsite that keeps crashing. Get the little things right! On the other extreme, don’t talk up the organisation falsely and create a fake perception that the candidate will see through on the first interview or even worse, once they’ve accepted their role. I don’t think a potential date would have appreciated meeting me had I originally got her interest via a five year old photo when I still had a flock of seagulls upon my scalp.

4. Play To Your Strengths

In many businesses, you often can’t compete with the big players who can offer shiny Sydney Harbour offices, great career progression and company retreats in Cancun. But no doubt there are parts of your organisation that will have great appeal.

When I was using Tinder, which sadly turned people into commodities at face value, I knew I was competing with 6 foot tall, chiselled, alpha-males with Colgate smiles. Instead of trying to compete by standing on a milk crate and using a bit of photoshop, I played to my strengths: photos of me snowboarding, scaling cliffs and finishing an Ironman. If I had a puppy photo I would have used that instead!

Use your recruitment marketing to really tap into your employer brand and as an opportunity to talk about the plethora of innovation awards you have won, the fortnight of flexitime on offer to the employee of the month and the opportunity to work in a small team and be involved in marketing, accounting, IT and business development. Chat to your team, find out what they love about their job and the culture and use this to attract like-minded people.

5. A Positive Candidate Experiences Will Win Hearts

If your candidate has to jump through hoops to apply for the role such as visiting a microsite which then clicks through to the global careers page, prompts them for a job reference number, asks 30 minutes of pre-screening questions and then waits 5 days to hear back from your team, the top talent who know their true value will have been turned off your organisation and be looking elsewhere before you know it.

Knowing that on Tinder too, if you have a message sat in your inbox for a week without response and then your first reply contains ‘My steel abs’, ‘Munchkins’ or ‘I allso love gremmar’, chances are that your match is already chatting to the next midget standing on a milk crate or the rival firm with the CRM system that sent an automated email to thank them for their application, provide a direct contact number and a clear outline of the next steps and timeframes.

6. Use Your Time Wisely

Looking at previous work experience and qualifications is no longer an accurate predictor of future on the job performance. There are so many more problem solving skills, communication skills and emotional intelligence attributes which dictate how well someone will perform in a job.

I am very aware that most HR and recruitment teams are incredibly under resourced and with unemployment in Australia at a 12 year high, some advertised roles are being inundated with applications. Unfortunately to screen large numbers of applicants accurately without excluding potential high performers, you often need to use more robust screening steps such as interviews and assessment centres. Great in an ideal world but not when you have 300 applications for a role.

I was wisely advised (and based on my dates’ suggestions, they were given the same advice), to always meet for the first time for something quick like a coffee, a gelato or a glass of wine. In dating and in screening applicants, we often know within a minute whether the person in front of you is what you’re looking for and this prevented the long awkward dinner dates where both of you are counting down the time until you can ask for the bill and go your separate ways. I know I saved a lot of ladies their valuable time too.

In this regard, there are many quick pre-screening pools available to help you accurately identify the skills and behaviours required for success in the role. Online cognitive, behavioural and ability tests as well as video interview screening means that you can filter out the unsuitable applicants, quickly identify top performers and focus on the key talent before your competitors do.

To end with, old-school dating folklore often includes the advice to treat a potential date how you would like someone to treat a relative. In other words, with upmost respect and care. The same should be done with your candidates from the moment they see your ad until they start their role. These will be your greatest advocates or detractors.

Get these simple things right, adapt your recruitment processes to make the most of available tools and get the right recruitment teams on board to make sure your process accurately reflects how you want your organisation to be perceived in the market.